Letters | Hong Kong needs more doctors and health workers: so why deny universities the funding to train them?

Pro-establishment legislators who blocked consideration of three universities’ application of funds to build medical teaching facilities are doing Hong Kong a disservice

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A researcher at work in a lab at the HKU Faculty of Medicine in Pok Fu Lam. To train top-notch medical professionals, universities need state-of-the-art laboratories, operation rooms and surgical equipment. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 7:00am, 5 Dec 2019Updated: 7:00am, 5 Dec 2019

It is worrying to learn that the government is withdrawing its funding request for building medical teaching facilities at the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University, and for allied health services training facilities at Polytechnic University (“Lawmakers put politics above needs of society”, December 3).

One of the reasons for the withdrawals is said to be objection from pro-establishment lawmakers. Legislator Ann Chiang Lai-wan even commented that there were already too many universities in Hong Kong, and the student drop-out rate was high.

We are already facing a shortage of local doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. The government has said it wants to increase the supply of local medical professionals. How, then, could she suggest that we would not need more and better facilities?

Besides classrooms, medical students must also have state-of-the-art laboratories, operation rooms, surgical and medical instruments, etc. Even if the number of medical students falls, they would still need resources to sharpen their skills.

It seems to me that these legislators who opposed the funding requests have failed to appreciate the success that our local doctors have achieved in the past.

Do they know that Chinese University successfully conducted Asia’s first non-invasive bronchoscopic microwave ablation in hybrid operating room for treating lung cancer? That HKU and Queen Mary Hospital performed the world’s first double transplant of a liver? Hong Kong is just a small city, but our doctors continue to surprise the world with world-first discoveries and operations.